


The Weight Of The World

by entanglednow, hikaru9



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Action, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Danger, Escape, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Getting Together, Historical, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, M/M, Mentions of Death, Natural Disasters, Peril, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Rescue, Sharing a Bed, Sleeping Together, Tenderness, Volcanic Eruption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29374170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru9/pseuds/hikaru9
Summary: At the height of the Roman Empire's power, Crowley meets Aziraphale for lunch in Pompeii. He's eager to share some of the famed street food the city has to offer, but the ash falling from the mountain to the North is steadily growing thicker.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 189
Kudos: 301





	1. 79 A.D.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collaboration with the amazingly talented hikaru9, who I was very excited to work with on something. I was absolutely blown away by the beautiful art they made for our story. 
> 
> It was a joy to put this whole thing together with you, thank you! ♥

Crowley sees the angel first.

Which is the way it usually happens, since it's something of a demonic force of habit to lurk just out of sight for a while, to blend into the shadows and put out the suggestion that there was nothing to see in the space where Crowley was standing, nothing worth noticing anyway. Eyes sliding away the moment they caught the shape of him. It's mostly so Crowley can watch the crowd unobserved, so he can judge the faces against people he knows, or people he might have known if he paid more attention. 

He likes to be absolutely certain that there's nothing that will make them stand out, and invite unwanted attention, no risk of interruptions, no hidden flavour of occult or ethereal presence that wasn't either of them. He wants to make sure that the both of them were safe, before he saunters closer and lets the angel see him.

Aziraphale on the other hand doesn't appear to have a care in the world.

He's seated himself at a thermopolium just off the main square and in full view of everyone - seemingly unconcerned about the many patrons milling around behind him, or occasionally leaning in next to him and shaking pouches, to decide if they can afford the probably overpriced delicacies on display. Aziraphale's long white toga has miraculously avoided the dust of the road, and the general grime of the streets. His sandals are tucked neatly underneath him, just visible under the many pale folds of material, that would be incredibly expensive if he'd actually bought them, rather than conjuring them out of thin air as Crowley tends to do. 

Aziraphale is currently perusing the selection of foodstuffs on offer over his clasped hands, expression delighted. The hot bowls of goat stew, spiced duck, pickled fish, fresh bread and snails on sticks resting over hot embers are each being considered carefully. He looks as if he can't decide which one to choose. Or, more likely, as if he's intending to try everything but doesn't know which one he wants to start with.

Crowley finally saunters over, crossing the street on the raised stones with the air of someone that had just caught sight of an acquaintance across the square. Rather than someone who'd been lurking beside a building for ten minutes trying to decide if the angel will be happy to see him. Or at least not disappointed. Aziraphale had seemed to enjoy their time together in Rome. He'd made Crowley eat oysters but he'd also laughed at his joke about fish, smiled a lot - and looked less lonely.

He takes his time, while Aziraphale points and marvels at a sweaty man in an apron who's currently wrapping a sticky duck in oiled leaves. The man's smiling at the angel's enthusiasm. Though it's also likely he's pegged him as a patron who can be tempted into trying - and more importantly affording - everything on the menu.

"Is it cooked with the fruit inside? How marvellous. I've seen pigeons cooked that way but never -" Aziraphale stops, having caught the flutter of Crowley's much shorter toga drifting in beside him. He turns in his seat and Crowley braces himself for the possibility that his appearance will not be welcome. But instead the angel meets his eyes with a wide smile, like they're old friends. The recognition isn't overtaken by any wary suspicion or mistrust, but just left out there for anyone to see.

Crowley's not expecting it and it throws him for a second, loosens his carefully chosen slouch into something more genuine.

"Aziraphale, fancy seeing you here."

"Crowley, I thought I felt you in the city. I was hoping that I'd -" He cuts himself off, his smile becoming something more careful, but not disappearing entirely. "Well, I mean, I was fairly certain we'd cross paths at some point." He gives the words a dramatic air that they don't really deserve. Since the Ark they've had a sort of professional working relationship - that might be a friendship if you tip it the right way and give it the benefit of the doubt. But Crowley's still surprised enough about it that he doesn't want to poke it too hard.

When Aziraphale pointedly tilts a little to show that the space beside him is suddenly miraculously empty, Crowley finds a second stool not so far away from the first and drapes himself over it. Close enough to deter anyone from sitting between them, but not so close as to give anyone the idea that they might be friends who're having lunch together. Crowley knows how to be careful.

"Well, you know how it is, busy place, lots to do," he offers as an opener, as if he hadn't had all the time in the world to come check up on what the angel was doing. He doesn't want to seem too eager after all. Keeping an eye on the competition is expected, isn't it? "New bum of the throne of Rome and everything."

The fact that all of hell appears to be avoiding this place right now, and didn't seem to care much what Crowley did in the city, was just icing on the cake. In fact, they've been so busy down there lately that they hadn't sent him up any special instructions or assignments for the last few years. Not that he was going to complain about it. He could do with a few decades of peace. Especially after everything with Caligula. The shine had definitely worn off of Rome for a bit after that.

"It's not technically a throne," Aziraphale argues, only to be thoroughly distracted when the large apron-wearing man - who smells strongly of sweat and spices up close - sets a bowl and a platter down in front of him. The smile the angel gives him is bright and genuine. "Oh, thank you so much, Rufus. They look tremendously inviting."

The man serving them offers Aziraphale a smile back, looking proud over his mashed and spiced foodstuffs and things on sticks - honestly, humans will put absolutely anything in their mouths but the angel always seems thrilled by it all.

A second tray and a bowl is set down in front of Crowley, with an encouraging look from Aziraphale. His surprise at being unexpectedly invited to join the angel for lunch luckily goes unnoticed, as Aziraphale shakes out a cloth for his fingers and makes noises over the food that should be considered unfit for a public space.

Crowley pulls himself together and reaches for an amphora of wine and two cups, while the angel applies himself to the difficult task of deciding where to start. He eventually draws the draped material of his toga back, folding it in his elbow so he can pick up a small stick, cooked snails trailed along its length in spirals.

"I've been meaning to try these. People have been talking about them from the moment I entered the city. These ones are marinated in wine, honey and spices. There are also sharp peppery ones and an option soaked in oil, garlic and herbs."

"Fabulous," Crowley says, when it really seems like the exact opposite. The angel's getting better at picking up on sarcasm, but today he seems to be either too excited or too hungry to be offended by Crowley's lack of enthusiasm, tugging the small treats off and popping them into his mouth.

Crowley watches his face as he chews, the way his nose scrunches in pleasure, the corners of his eyes smiling while his mouth is busy.

"Oh, they're just the slightest bit sweet." The angel slips his thumb into his mouth to suck off the juices - in a way that Crowley refuses to be caught looking at - before taking the wine that's passed to him. "Do have one yourself."

Crowley grumbles his opinion on picking up any old thing off the ground and eating it, but it's hard to disagree with the angel's obvious expression - and noises - of enjoyment.

"No, they really are very good. The spices have flavoured the whole thing and it leaves a pleasantly smoky aftertaste." Aziraphale pokes his tongue out to catch a shine on his upper lip and Crowley upends his wine rather than think too much about that. "You absolutely must try one." His own platter is urged towards him, knocking against his curled fingers.

Crowley regards the small squelchy things on sticks. Which is the least appetising thing he's seen in a good century. The oysters hadn't been terrible though. Bit briny for his taste, but the way the angel had cupped the shells and tipped them back, occasionally leaning over the table to add a squeeze of lemon or a pinch of mustard to Crowley's. It wasn't the worst memory Crowley had.

"Fine." He picks up the stick and drags the meat off with his nails. Barely more than a mouthful all together.

Aziraphale gives a tut at his impatience, peeling his remaining snail off with a delicate sort of care. "You're supposed to savour them one by one, you won't be able to properly appreciate the flavour like that."

"I got plenty of flavour," Crowley says while he chews. "Not a fan of the sweetness, wouldn't pick them for myself, but they're not awful. Bet Rufus here is charging more sestertii than they're worth though."

Aziraphale pouts at him, he actually pouts, as if Crowley is being rude about a friend.

"The price is very fair, he's worked hard to get the spices just right. Besides, it's not just the food, it's the atmosphere," Aziraphale explains, gesturing around them at the spill of humanity. "Taking in the city while you eat. It's the new thing."

Crowley raises an eyebrow at him and considers their surroundings. "What the 'just off the road enjoying the dirt and the hot sun and the faint scent of goat shit while you eat,' atmosphere?" The city is warm today, the smell is noticeable. Aziraphale pouts, but Crowley gets the impression his good mood over lunch isn't going to be bruised. Which he can't feel too bad about. "Don't think it'll catch on," he decides.

The angel seems to think that was an invitation to convince him otherwise.

"It is terribly convenient though, if you just want a spot of something to bolster you on a journey." Aziraphale gives a little wriggle, as if the thought amuses him. "Or while you're waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Crowley wants to know.

Aziraphale frowns in thought and turns his head to watch the bustle of the market around them. "Hmm, who knows, delivery of a message, a good deal at the market, or perhaps for a friend to join you for lunch?" Aziraphale smiles, before he seems to realise what he'd said. "Or - or a work colleague, or some acquaintance who happens to be in the area." He fusses with his platter, moving the bread around as if it has somewhere important to be while Crowley watches him through his glasses.

He's trying to decide whether that was an honest mistake or a slip of the tongue.

Aziraphale prods at one of the other steaming jars, then peers curiously into it. If he leans any further over the heated embers he's going to end up on the menu. Crowley reaches out without thinking, catches his arm and urges him back. The brief and unexpected warmth of the angel through cloth is strange enough that it only occurs to him afterwards that it's the first time they've ever touched.

Four thousand years - he's leant, and gestured, and steered the angel with his proximity, but he's never actually reached out and touched him.

Aziraphale blinks at him, seemingly at a loss for what he was saying. There's surprise and something oddly curious about his expression, but nothing offended, nothing horrified. Crowley shoves his glasses more firmly over his eyes, suddenly self-conscious about being seen. Worse, about being seen being _friendly_ , which is definitely not allowed. He's not the only one. The angel hurriedly adjusts his toga, colour flushing his cheeks red in a way that Crowley refuses to find fascinating. It's a warm afternoon, and the heat from the cooking is suffusing the air, there's nothing to be read into anything.

He struggles for something else to look at and finds the mountain in the distance, significantly more of a conversation piece than it was yesterday.

"Mountain's acting up again," he offers, glad for something to say at least.

Aziraphale turns to see, though he can't have missed the fact that Vesuvius is covered by a thick cloud of smoke and ash, in stark contrast to the rather lovely midday sky around it.

"Oh, yes, it's been like that for a few days now. I think something's burning up there too. Perhaps the earthquakes knocked something into a fire pit, or brought a tree down too close to a temple flame that sort of thing. I do hope it doesn't reach the vineyards, I hear the grapes are going to be very good this year." 

The grapes are always good here the way Crowley's heard it. If the angel had been in the city longer he would have accused him of being the cause of it. He'll end up being mistaken for a god of the harvest again if he's not careful.

Crowley follows the dark trails of smoke in the sky. "Doesn't look like a wood fire, looks more like -" He snaps his mouth shut because he'd been about to say 'looks more like the sulphur pits in hell,' which was ridiculous and the angel would have called him on it immediately. You don't get those sorts of temperatures on earth. "Humans burning things they shouldn't I expect. You know what they're like."

Aziraphale frowns. "Yes, I suppose you're right. They've always been so fascinated by fire. I hope it wasn't set on purpose. People work so hard to create things and then it's all gone in one thoughtless act."

Crowley didn't mean to nudge a gloomy expression onto the angel's face. He's supposed to be enjoying himself. Lunch, six different sorts of bread, duck in leaves, snails, that sort of thing. He pokes at the food on his own plate, hoping to drag Aziraphale back to sharing his opinions on the stall's still steaming offerings, before hefting the amphora and pouring them both another cup.

"So, how long are you in the city for?"

"Oh." Aziraphale pulls a face."Not too much longer I expect. I really just wanted to absorb some of the local flavour, spend some time at the forum, perhaps visit the amphitheatre. I hear they're putting on a play tomorrow." The angel perks up noticeably. "Another day of celebration for something or other. I do hope they don't throw fruit at the poor actors again. It wasn't Orsinius's fault that his mask fell off last time."

"Miracles all done and nowhere to go, eh?" Crowley offers, because it's hard to resist teasing the angel when he makes it so easy.

But there's something that looks a lot like a wince, Aziraphale's mouth tugging down at the edges. "Ah, well, I wasn't technically supposed to be performing any miracles in the area," he says in a low voice, before immediately hiding the statement in the depths of his cup.

Now isn't that interesting. Crowley can't quite hold a laugh at the angel's obviously guilty air.

"What's this? Taking a cheeky holiday away from heaven's orders are you?"

"I'm doing no such thing, you fiend." Aziraphale breaks up one of the pieces of hard bread and dips some in his stewed goat meat. "As I said, I was just stopping off on my way to the coast, to try the food and to -"

The angel looks at him, expression pained as whatever excuses he'd told himself creak under the weight of the truth. Crowley finds his face, and his voice, softening without his permission.

"Course you were, probably blessing the poor and the hungry too, eh?" Though there weren't as many of either of those in Pompeii as there were in Rome. Happy people with food in their bellies had less reason to murder their fellow citizens - course, they still found plenty of reason anyway, they were still human. "Can't take you anywhere without you trying to do good, can I?"

The angel gives in with a sigh. "There have been some dreadful earthquakes here lately and I've been helping just a little, just here and there. A few collapsed villas that found themselves suddenly not quite as collapsed as people expected. A few foundations shored up so they'll stand up better to a bit of shaking, a few roadways cleared, a few cracks sorted out, nothing very noticeable or large, just - just rather a lot of little things." He pauses as if he's worried that admitting it out loud might get him in trouble, fingers destroying a perfectly good bread. "I couldn't help it, do you know how many people live in some of these homes? Their children and servants and - and animals? I couldn't just let them be crushed. If not now then some time in the future. They've been dealing with tremors for years here."

He stops and looks at Crowley, as if he expects to be told that of course he wasn't supposed to do nice things for people in need. Instead Crowley refills the angel's cup.

"Don't know why you're looking so guilty, seems proper angelic behaviour to me, making sure no one gets crushed, saving lives and all of that. If you're not supposed to be anywhere else right now then what's the harm in lending a bit of an ethereal hand here and there?"

That gets him a smile at least, though it's brief and a little shaky.

"The whole city is marked as unnecessary, no heavenly miracles allowed," Aziraphale says miserably. "Which I suppose means that it's more your domain than ours now. Though I can't think why, the people are so nice, they're not currently at war with anyone, and the culture and the food are being shared freely. I'm always told that -" His mouth tightens into a line briefly, the space between his eyebrows pulling in, as if he's about to say something he disagrees with but is going to power ahead anyway. "That it's a waste to give any aid when we've already lost to...well, to your lot. That there's no point to it if the people are already marked for downstairs. But I couldn't help myself, and since I haven't been technically banned from providing assistance via my own ethereal power, at least not yet, I stepped in to help here and there. Though I may have pushed a bit harder than I should trying to -" he stops.

Trying to prove them wrong, Crowley thinks, but he doesn't say it.

"Oh, I know better than to exhaust myself completely," Aziraphale reassures him - and Crowley had to wonder if he'd been wearing an expression that needed to be reassured. "The very last thing I want is to unexpectedly fall prey to some sort of robbery, or accident, or wild animal attack." He grimaces at the thought.

Crowley pauses halfway through a spicy piece of duck, because the thought that Aziraphale has been pushing enough miracles to not be able to protect himself against some animal he might meet along the road is - deeply upsetting. He pushes the feeling down so he doesn't have to examine it too closely.

"Well, I have nothing to do for a while," he offers, with the lazy air of a demon who finds the idea amusing. "I'm sure I can hang around and see off any threatening wildlife."

Aziraphale looks surprised and hopeful, but in a sad-eyed sort of way that Crowley finds he doesn't like at all. He reaches over the embers and acquires him another stick full of snails.

" _Crowley_ ," Aziraphale chastises, but softly, a lilting sort of tease to his disapproval.

"I put sestertii in the pot. Eat your snails, angel."

Aziraphale smiles.

Over the last of the meat stew and bread dipped in oil, Crowley teases the angel's mood back to something jovial. He even tries a few more things from the selection they have to offer, just to make him happy. The angel ends up laughing and encouraging him to take another spoonful of something that tastes peppery and fragrant.

"It's from the south coast," Aziraphale tells him, as if that makes it better. "They soak it in the meat juices for three days."

He likes it less the more Aziraphale describes it, if he's being honest, but he still opens his mouth when the angel gestures another spoonful enthusiastically in his direction. Any caution about Crowley's company seems to have been overlaid by his excitement to share the flavours of everything on the menu. He offers a pleased smile as easily as a spoon, and Crowley would never admit to being - not tempted, never tempted - but certainly intrigued by the way Aziraphale seems to forget that they're supposed to be hereditary enemies. That they're supposed to be wiling and thwarting and, to be fair, probably smiting too.

The angel couldn't look further away from the smiting sort at this moment in time. Instead, Aziraphale is laughing while he explains to Crowley how they press the olives here, and how they're using it to preserve fish in a way that sounds revolting and just mad enough to be true. Aziraphale is easy to talk to, he wants to talk, he wants to share and laugh and marvel at all the wonders humanity has to offer. From the viewpoint of someone who isn't human at all.

Crowley, for all that he'd be forced to protest otherwise if anyone asked, finds that he wants that too.

"The sweet cakes here are made of almonds. I was offered one by a friend at a symposium not far from here, and it immediately became one of my favourites." Aziraphale points towards the table behind Rufus the cook - who's currently busy lifting steaming pots from their holes and setting them in front of enthusiastic patrons. There's a small stack of white and yellow squares under a damp cloth. "He only makes sixty a day, so it's best to get here early."

Crowley, who'd previously taken barely any notice of the stalls and their street food, decides that he definitely needs to stop by in the morning and acquire a few of these cakes. For angel bribery purposes, of course. Even if the only thing he's bribing him into is that pleased expression he wears when Crowley does something unexpectedly...when Crowley chooses not to take advantage of his good nature, for reasons of his own. The way he'll say 'oh, Crowley, you shouldn't have,' and Crowley will have to make noises at him before he can make any accusations of kindness out loud. Which would drop the both of them in it.

"M'sure he'd save you a few, if you asked," he says, and refuses to watch the angel be so pleased where people can see him, instead peering into the amphora to check if they've emptied it yet. Surprisingly, they have and he waves Rufus over to get a refill.

"So what have you been up to?" Aziraphale asks. "I'm sure it's something fiendishly clever."

Crowley tips his head down and peers at him over the top of his glasses. He might be smiling, he might not.

"If I tell you you'll just have to thwart it," he complains. "Are you plying me with lunch just to get hellish secrets?"

Crowley's thrilled when the angel looks amused rather than upset by the accusation.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly stop you, remember. I'm not supposed to be here. You will, unfortunately, be free to spread discord to your heart's content. You have the better of me I'm afraid, so you might as well tell me."

Crowley leans on the warm wood their bowls rest on, then pauses to let the angel wriggle in anticipation. He knows perfectly well that Crowley is going to tell him.

"I currently happen to be a wealthy patron who's throwing a bit of coin around some of the establishments that are fond of a wager or two. Pompeii has an awful lot of coin for me to win." Crowley affects the air of a demon who's been letting his fiendish schemes work for him.

"Gambling is illegal in the city," Aziraphale says, with a scandalised expression that wouldn't convince a blind man.

"Ah, but it's almost never enforced. You've seen the number of soldiers playing dice games in every bar from here to the sea. I'm just encouraging them to be a little more adventurous in their wagers, a little more willing to take a bet from a stranger. The ones that walk away rich spend it all on wine and company, the ones that walk away poor take their furious misery out into the city. It's a win for me and a tick in a box for hell." Crowley tries not to pull a face but he can't help it, there's a reason he doesn't enjoy going back. "Hell's unpleasant at the best of times, but if they think I've been doing nothing while they haven't been paying attention, they might be more inclined to pay attention in the future. So a steady bit of temptation is a -" Crowley frowns. "It's a - something with one rock, doing lots of things by doing one thing with a rock."

"Killing birds I think," Aziraphale offers with a frown. He can always be counted on to pick up idioms. The angel is a fan of wordplay, Crowley's noticed.

"Right, killing many birds with one rock. It's a bit too easy if I'm being honest, you know what humans are like, they'll bet on anything - and they'll bet everything."

"Oh, they do have some fantastic games though - complex tests of skill and strategy." The angel's excitement at the idea is obvious.

Crowley shakes his head. "Nah, not the right crowd for anything you need to actually be sober for. It's more dice rolls and which tortoise is gonna reach the line quickest, or how many drinks can Gaius put down before he passes out or vomits. Nothing you'd actually want to stay and watch." The angel's disappointment is clear and Crowley feels compelled to try and ease it a little. "Besides, it's not like any of them would be real competition for us in something like that, right?"

"Well, I suppose we could -" Aziraphale's face goes through several complicated expressions while Crowley watches, before settling on something that almost looks satisfied. "I mean, it seems only sensible for us to test each other's skills, search for weaknesses in each other's strategy?"

Crowley hadn't expected Aziraphale to ever suggest that they play a game together - though he might have idly entertained the thought a time or two.

"We could," he agrees, with all the calm he doesn't currently feel. Because his brain says 'make the angel think it's something he wants, something you're giving him.' When what he really means is 'don't let him know how much you want it too.'

"Excellent." Aziraphale gives a little clap with his hands. "Do you want to rustle us up some pieces and a board, or shall I?"

Crowley chokes briefly on the wine he'd been drinking. He definitely wasn't prepared for the angel to jump in with both feet, he'd expected a bit more back and forth first. A suggestion that he was luring him into it, to discover his weaknesses. Maybe a hint of temptation that wasn't really a temptation to give him an excuse. The angel isn't even going to make him work for it. He'd gotten the impression Aziraphale liked to lean into that to explain away some of their time together. Crowley's a bit unprepared for him to be so enthusiastic.

It almost feels like cheating.

"Right, yeah, think I can manage that." Crowley slips a hand inside his toga, brings out a piece of rolled vellum marked out with pale squares, and a pouch full of carefully carved wooden tokens. "You familiar with the game of latrones?" he asks. The angel's smart as a whip but Crowley's noticed that he doesn't always pay attention to the latest fashions or games.

Aziraphale turns his stool and hurriedly sets the amphora and his remaining lunch out of the way, so Crowley can unroll the thing between them.

"Oh, yes," Aziraphale says enthusiastically. "Such an interesting game. Though, as you said, playing against humans always feels a bit unfair. The last person I had a game against wasn't a skilled player at all, and I had to make quite a bit of an effort to lose. He'd have been much less liable to hear my proposals on the new bathhouse if I hadn't allowed him a moment of triumph."

Crowley pauses with a token half-raised. "You think the city needs another bathhouse? You can't move already for running into a bathhouse here. Was the first thing I noticed."

"They encourage conversation, cleanliness and culture," Aziraphale says, with some excitement, it's clearly something he feels strongly about.

"That's not all they encourage." Crowley feels compelled to remind him, and he can't help the smile that slips out with the words. "You can't have missed that." Humans will do that literally anywhere. The being watched and getting caught seemed to be half the fun sometimes.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Aziraphale says, with a perfectly innocent expression that's only a shade more believable than the scandalised one. 

"I'm sure you don't," Crowley says with a smile. "Shall I be the Empire?"

Aziraphale makes a gesture for him to go ahead, and Crowley sets up the pieces while the angel pours them more wine.

-

"...and so I told him it would definitely look bad if he wrote that on the wall. Don't know what he was thinking, everyone was going to know it was him if he did that. He wasn't even trying to hide that it was him who stole the horses."

"Wasn't that part of the temptation?" Aziraphale reasons. "It seems very horse-focused so far."

"The _horses_ weren't the temptation, stealing from Ossius was the end of his part in it. He was supposed to find them gone and be unable to buy the boat, leading to him fighting with Menaleus so his daughter wouldn't be -" Crowley waves a hand. Because the end of that was 'so that his daughter wouldn't be forced to marry Ossius's awful fucking son.' "Y'know, shame, disgrace, ruined reputations all round, the usual." Crowley waves a hand. "Your turn, angel, stop distracting me."

Aziraphale smiles at him, shuffling a piece forward three spaces without looking.

"Well, I'm sure I should chastise you for bringing a family to ruin."

"Awful family, couldn't stand a single one of them," Crowley insists with a gesture, flinging droplets of wine across the game that the angel banishes with a click of tongue. "But like-to-like and all that."

Aziraphale frowns at him, seems poised to dispute that, until the cook drifts past with a new platter of steaming, honeyed duck.

"Oh, Rufus, could I possibly have - yes, two please. No, make it three, thank you so much."

Crowley can't help but laugh into his cup while Aziraphale makes space on the already fairly cramped stall top so Rufus can fork him off three breasts.

"Didn't you already try those?" Crowley points out.

Aziraphale is already sucking duck grease off his thumb. "Yes, but they're excellent." He lifts a piece he'd torn from the breast and offers it over. "Did you have some of these ones? I don't think you did. Do try some, Rufus prepares them so well."

Crowley makes a noise of protest but the angel's laughing and smiling and reaching into Crowley's space with his soft hand, and he takes the offering just to make him stop. His fingers slide against Aziraphale's for the briefest moment. He's almost annoyed to discover that it's very good, the meat is hot, the spices delicate, the edges perfectly crisped. Even if it's a little much for his sensitive snake senses, he has to admit that the man can cook.

"It's fine," he offers.

Far from being disappointed, the angel looks delighted. "Oh, I'm so pleased you like it."

"I never said that," Crowley argues.

Aziraphale laughs and hands him a cloth for his fingers. "Yes you did."

"Anyway, enough stalling, angel, it's your turn."

"No, I believe it's yours, I just went. And I believe I'll also be free to take your piece unless you can rustle up something in the way of a defence in the next two moves."

Crowley looks down.

He's right, the blasted angel has been carefully surrounding him while making ridiculous noises over roasted duck and snails and laughing at his misfortune. Crowley should be furious. He should be absolutely furious. But he looks up, past that stupid pert noise, the laughing eyes and soft rounded cheeks - he finds someone as old as him, someone who's seen the world take shape, seen civilisation inhale and exhale their way between war and peace, growth and selfish destruction, over and over again. He sees someone who understands that, someone just like him. Someone who comes from the same place, the only person who's ever made the effort to know him.

"Angel, I may have to start cheating if you're going to play this well," he says instead. The warmth in his chest isn't anger, he's not sure what it is, but he's content to let it stay.

"Oh, I'm sure I could thwart your attempts."

"If you can see my attempts then they deserve to be thwarted."

Aziraphale offers him a smile that suggests he's rather looking forward to it, and Crowley finds it very difficult to look away. He finally forces himself to look at the board instead, to consider his next move.

It's difficult not to notice at this point that the squares are covered with the finest layer of ash, which is now drifting steadily down from the sky. There are also small pieces of pumice flecked along the stone, and making smeared grey marks on his dark toga.

"How long do you think the mountain's going to keep doing that?" Crowley asks.

Aziraphale is gazing upwards with a worried expression as well. The air has a certain taste to it now. It's familiar enough to set Crowley's teeth on edge, echoes of home on his tongue.

"Hopefully not too much longer, it's going to ruin the crops otherwise. Which will be a disaster."

"I don't like it," Crowley admits. "It doesn't feel right, and I think it's going to get worse. The people think the same, have you seen how many of them are heading out of the city? You should leave too, cut your plans short and head south."

"Crowley, we would have been told if anything was going to happen, anything we had to worry about, surely?"

Crowley really doesn't like the angel voicing the thought in the back of his head. He hadn't wanted to say it out loud.

"Would we?" he argues. "Technically neither of us are supposed to be here."

Aziraphale frowns as if he doesn't have an answer for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hikaru9 can be found on tumblr under wargoddess9


	2. And All Was Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii, and the many people who died there. Though nothing is described very explicitly please know that it is still fairly intense.

Aziraphale hadn't spent this much time with Crowley since the Ark, when the sodden demon had spent long days lurking in the bowels of the boat. His sharp presence had been something of a comfort, even if every conversation had threatened to turn into an argument. But here in the city, under the sun and after a tremendous meal together, Aziraphale can't pretend he hasn't enjoyed his company. 

They do part eventually, a few hours after lunch and after several more rounds of latrones. Which Aziraphale had found both thrilling and mentally stimulating in a way that humans could never quite provide for him. Especially after Crowley had suggested they stretch a little and play it in five dimensions. The final score had been three wins to Aziraphale and one to Crowley, though one of his victories had been a very close run game. The whole thing had been unexpectedly satisfying, thwarting the demon in a battle of wits, a test of skills, a fierce intellectual challenge. Crowley's furious affront and accusation of cheating had been so obviously just for show, not even a hint of real malice to it. Aziraphale had easily managed to knock his mood into grudging respect with a hearty congratulations on being a worthy opponent.

Crowley hadn't let it go so easily, of course, reminding him that pride was most definitely a sin, but Aziraphale had caught the teasing edge to the words, and the real meaning underneath.

Still, he knows it wouldn't do to spend so much time together in the future. At least nothing that couldn't be explained away as an adversarial sort of back-and-forth, or as a careful probing of the demon's current devious plans and defences - should anyone have reason to ask. After all, there's always the possibility that Gabriel could drop in unexpectedly. An extended lunch is probably stretching it a bit as it is. But Aziraphale reasons that as long as he doesn't share too much, and makes a point to remind Crowley what he is and what's expected of them, then there's no 'collaborating with the enemy' sort of flavour to their interactions.

It's protecting the both of them. Crowley has to understand that - no, of course he does.

It's really just -

Aziraphale has been terribly lonely of late. The humans are fascinating, but their lives are very brief and very tumultuous. They're so eager to learn, but then they seem to do terrible and beautiful things with that knowledge in equal measure. Even after four thousand years Aziraphale isn't sure that he quite understands them. But he does his best to encourage them to make the right choices, to take the lives they've been given and use them to improve the world around them, to bring joy to the people they meet.

Though, judging by the number of notes and notations in his file, heaven thinks he could do better. That he could be doing more...or less. Gabriel definitely seems to want him to do less. Aziraphale isn't sure that his superiors actually understand how very many people there are in the world at this moment in time, and how many there might be in the future. Or how the smallest act of kindness at the right moment can mean the difference between -

Aziraphale had been slowly walking the streets, heading back to the villa that had been graciously offered to him while he was in the city. But he finds his feet bringing him to a stop not too far past the macellum.

Something about the air is suddenly different.

Heavier.

It's not terribly dissimilar from the feeling just before Gabriel arrives, a sort of static vibration. Though it would be very inconvenient if that happened in the middle of the city, in front of so many witnesses. He'd have to alter the memories of at least a hundred people. Since no one else ever wants to bother with the details.

But the longer it goes on, the more Aziraphale realises that it's not a message from heaven, no, this is something else entirely.

It's almost like there's a pressure to the air, pushing in gently but noticeably from all sides, an unexpected squeeze that feels almost warm on his skin. The wind has dropped to nothing and there's a sudden strange stillness. It's as if the world is holding its breath for something.

There are fewer people in the city than there were this morning, many of them heading elsewhere to escape the light but steady ashfall and the occasional scatter of pumice from the sky. Even the ones that are still here, there's an oddly hurried sort of purpose to them, as if they can feel that something isn't right as well.

The darkness has drawn in, though it's still much too early to be evening. The smoke from the mountain is still spreading overhead, like dark, fat storm clouds swallowing the blue of the sky. That strange and unnatural weight to the air gives the world an unpleasant, almost claustrophobic, feel that leaves Aziraphale's wings shivering in liminal space. It's more than obvious now that the fire and the hot drift of ash and small pieces of grit and pumice from the mountain is a problem that can no longer be ignored. The snow-like texture of it alighting on every surface, softening edges, ruining clothing, and leaving the world and its people smeared a dusty grey.

Aziraphale can't help but think of another time, three thousand years ago. When the heavens opened and the rain fell, and then didn't stop. When it flowed up through the ground and down through the rivers, swelling and surging and finally washing away the world that man had built. 

Hearing the explanation of what was going to happen from Gabriel, his tone oddly enthusiastic and impatient for it to begin, had been quite different to watching it happen. To standing on the prow of the boat and watching an impossible wave of water wash away a crowd of fleeing, terrified people - 

It's a memory Aziraphale prefers not to dwell on. She must have had Her reasons, it's not his place to decide what was _deserved_. Though that can't be what's happening here. He would have been told. God had promised that would be the last time She'd wipe out mankind - at least until the end. The final battle. Aziraphale is certain that it's much too early for that.

She'd _promised_ the Flood would be the last time.

Aziraphale's in the middle of the street, looking up towards the heavy, towering shape of Vesuvius when it begins.

There's a sound like a thousand angels falling to earth, a cracking boom that roars through the city and has people crying out and grasping for each other. There's no wind and then just as suddenly people are being pushed to the ground by a hot burst of it, tables scraping across the stones and then falling, pottery smashing and rolling into the street, weakened brickwork cascading down without warning.

Aziraphale is still on his feet, still looking up and he sees it happen in slow motion. The top of Vesuvius expands, it cracks open and spreads outwards, spreads upwards. A great, roaring shake as half a mountain of rock and ash and heat like the fires of hell comes apart, and starts funnelling upwards into the sky.

He realises immediately that there's nowhere for it to go. It's going to come down. It's going to come straight down again, crashing into the slope of the burning mountain, and then - and then -

Aziraphale grasps the two people sprawled nearest to him and hauls them to their feet, then two more, before pushing them in the direction of the road, the route out of the city.

"Go, go now, there's no time. Tell everyone you see, tell everyone they have to run. They have to leave now. Don't stop for anything." He has to shout over the sound of it. He can still hear a roaring far in the distance, as if the whole mountain may split apart yet. It's so loud they can hear the fury of it miles away. But that's not the end of it, there's also the terrible sound of rock cracking deep underground as it strains and buckles and then gives.

The world shakes.

He reaches down for another two people, who are on their knees beside him, pulls them upright and urges them after the rest. He makes his voice loud enough to drown out the shouting, and the screaming, and that endless droning roar. He can feel the earth beneath him, the deep angry rumble of the ground, a steady shake and shudder as the sky goes dark, then darker, it fills and fills and it doesn't stop.

It's not going to stop.

The people nearest the mountain, the workers in the vineyards and farms, Aziraphale knows that there's no hope for any of them.

The ash from above is suddenly thick, Aziraphale can feel it collecting in his hair, smearing down his white toga, chunks of pumice and earth hit the stone beside him as he's pulling a dazed man from the ground and shoving him forward.

"Go, go quickly."

God help him. He'd used too many miracles over the last few days, spared so much of himself to help that keeping the debris from hitting the people as they run is far harder than it should be. He can already feel his chest heaving to pull in air, which suddenly feels worryingly necessary. It feels like half of what he's breathing is already dust and grit and powdered rock.

A herd of goats run past him, knock into an elderly man and send him sprawling, but Aziraphale is too far away to help him. A mother and two children take shelter in a doorway and Aziraphale has to drag them out, has to lift the youngest child and push it into the woman's arms, make sure the eldest, who can't be more than seven or eight, is holding tight to her hand. He quickly wraps scarves that he pulled from nothing around their faces, to keep them from breathing in the ash that's now choking in the street.

"Hold tight to her, or you'll get lost in the smoke. You can't stay here, the city isn't safe anymore. Go that way." He pushes them in the direction of the market, the route down to the coast - he spares a miracle from his overtaxed body to let her see through the ash-filled streets, to let her find the way.

The world is still shaking and Aziraphale can't make it stop. 

A man is trapped beneath an overturned cart, onions and jars of oil spilled and broken around him. Aziraphale grasps a wheel and pushes it off of him, helps him to his feet and tells him that he's unhurt, nothing broken, nothing torn. He makes it true - he makes it true and it _hurts_. The man wants to ask questions, dazed and afraid. Aziraphale urges him to go. He urges them all to go, pushing where need be.

A small child in a torn tunic is trying to carry a baby goat, which is bleating frantically. But the boy is too small, his arms too short. He's crying with the impossible futility of it, as the world turns grey around him.

Aziraphale stops a large man carrying two bolts of heavy, expensive cloth and he forces him to drop them. He puts the child in one arm and the goat in the other.

"You will carry them both out of the city," Aziraphale tells him. It is not a suggestion.

The ash is falling like rain now, and it's fiercely hot, searing the skin it touches, sliding into his lungs and burning there too. The very air itself is hot to breathe. But Aziraphale knows that there's worse to come, far worse.

More than a few people are heading the wrong way, back towards the mountain, perhaps hoping to get to the river. Aziraphale knows they're not going to make it before the way is blocked, or the smoke renders them blind. In the time it's taken him to cross the square the sky is almost black. Pieces of rock and compacted ash are now hitting the ground, steaming and scorching the stone. Everyone is coughing and Aziraphale can only still see through it because he's sparing a miracle.

He's used far too many miracles. Now when he needs them, when he desperately needs them, he has very little left.

People are still moving through the thickness of the air, drifts of ash coating them from the head down, their bright clothing now painted grey. It's happened so quickly, it feels like only minutes since the mountain broke open.

Aziraphale is trying to get as many to go ahead of him as he can, but some of them refuse, desperately looking for friends or family members. Some of them bar themselves in their homes, too afraid to flee into further danger. They go back for possessions, risking their lives for things they can afford to lose. There are so many people - so many brave, foolish, determined, frightened people. 

Aziraphale can't miracle them all to go with him. There are too many. Why are there so many that won't listen?

Larger pieces of rock are falling now, a downpour of fiery debris that's almost impossible to predict or to protect against in the state he is now. Fire licks at standards, villa furnishings and market stalls with equal enthusiasm, barring the way down several side-streets when a collection of oil barrels are set alight by a rain of small burning stones.

Aziraphale has to leave now, he has to get out, to make sure the way out is clear for others. Hundreds of people could get lost in the smoke, could be vulnerable when the sky eventually comes down, when the mountain decides to loose everything straining inside it on the city.

If he was with them he could show them the way. He could keep them safe. 

But he has to try and save one more person at least. He heads for the closest to him, a young man trying to untie his horse, whose panicked thrashing and screaming has made the knot of its reins impossible to loosen. The man is coughing desperately, his voice breaking on frightened, pleading demands.

"Enos, Enos, be still - _please_."

Aziraphale grasps the reins and snaps them free, hand lifting to press against the horse's side. It stops rearing and stills, its ribcage heaving as it fixes its wild eyes on him. The animal knows perfectly well that the city is doomed and it's terrified. Aziraphale doubts it will heed anyone's commands, even if the man manages to saddle it.

"You'll never be able to ride him out of this," Aziraphale says firmly. "You'll both die, let him go." He doesn't have to make it a command, one look at the horse's twitching head and the man knows it's true. He stops trying to reclaim him, allows his hands to fall away and gives a coughing nod.

Aziraphale lets his hand slip from the leather and the horse wheels on the stone and charges into the dense smoke.

"Are the gods angry with us?" the man asks.

Aziraphale opens his mouth to reply, only for a cough to break free. He'd forgotten briefly that breathing is necessary for speaking, a terrible inconvenience at the moment. His body is having trouble healing itself, which is not a good sign for him at all. He may have been exaggerating slightly earlier when he'd suggested to Crowley that he'd be helpless against a wild animal attack, but whatever is left in his corporation now, it's keeping him alive. If he tries to channel any more miracles through it, the body will die.

"A question for when you're somewhere safe, perhaps?" he offers, and feels no guilt for it. "Your horse had the right idea, go quickly."

Aziraphale watches him hurry away.

Just one more.

One more.

It's almost impossible to see where the buildings break for the streets now, the tops of the villas all lost under a heavy cover of ash. The forum, once an imposing site in the distance, has disappeared entirely. The ash already blankets the ground, gritty and hot through his sandals. It's starting to collect in piles against doorways. Not just ash but loose stone and melting chunks of earth. The mountain is still rumbling and cracking in the distance.

He can hear people coughing in the smoke. People calling out for their friends, or for help. People banging at doorways that have trapped them inside.

_There are so many_.

There's a bakery, a small place, one story and a roof that seems to have already half-collapsed. There are at least two muffled voices coming from within. A heavy fall of hot stones and ash has blocked the doorway. Aziraphale uses a shield to break the mass and drag it free, the metal heating painfully in his hands as he works. When he tugs open the scorched door there are four shocked faces behind it. Three adults and one young boy.

Aziraphale doesn't waste time, the air is almost too hot to bear. He's already left it far too long.

"There's no -" He stops, coughing helplessly, before forcing his corporation to let him speak. "There's no time, we must go." He ushers them towards the street, propelling them with strong hands, and has no opportunity to spot or avoid a mass of burning rock that slams into the ground next to them, throwing molten chunks of itself in a wide arc.

Aziraphale is knocked to his knees, the force of it leaving him surprised and winded. He finds the stones of the road unexpectedly hot beneath his spread hands.

He's dazed for long enough that when he pushes himself upright the baker is screaming and stumbling in the smoke, half his tunic ablaze. Aziraphale cannot see the other man, or the woman. He doesn't know if they're even alive. The boy is left sobbing in the street, choking with the effort of it.

Aziraphale reaches for him.

The ground shakes and he's knocked over again when a second chunk of rock lands next to him, far too close, a wave of terrible heat slamming into him from the nearness of it. All the sound in the world is drowned out by its impact. He can't catch a breath, there's too much happening too quickly, he'd pushed himself too hard. He's lucky that he's still alive, but his corporation has nothing left to give. 

Aziraphale can no longer hear the boy. He can no longer hear anything. His head is ringing and he can barely breathe. He's not strong enough to do more. He looks up, eyes stinging and watering, only to see that the whole sky is filled with burning orange embers, with smoke and endless grey snow, and he knows that this is going to be where he dies. 

He's never died before -

\- he blinks and the sky is gone, there's nothing overhead but a spill of spreading blackness.

Aziraphale can smell burning feathers, acidic sulphur and the dry rasp of scales. It's a comfort in the darkness, more than he could ever have imagined.

A cool hand presses against his face, shakes it, then slaps.

"Aziraphale, open your eyes." The command is fierce and familiar, and he's helpless to do anything but exactly what it asks of him. He forces his eyes open and finds Crowley. His smoke-smudged face wearing an expression he'd never seen before. One of his lenses is cracked, and his hair has lost its vivid shine to a layer of ash. They're still in the middle of the square, shrouded in greyness and death, rocks falling around them. Crowley's wings are pulled up and over him, a shield against the mountain's fury.

"Crowley." It comes out as a croak, though Aziraphale is too tired and too dizzy to hide the surprise or the relief in it.

"Get up, angel."

He's not sure that he can, and in truth Crowley pulls him up more than he makes it to his feet under his own power. His hands grip tightly at the demon's long arms to steady himself for a moment, and then longer when he finds his legs reluctant to hold him. The long wrap of his toga is mostly gone, the remaining length of it sooty and scorched where it had spilled across the ground. There's actually flame licking up the lower half of his tunic. Crowley crouches briefly to grasp the hem and pull sharply, the once-beautiful wool tearing at the knees. He tosses the ruined lower half aside. It should be more shocking but Aziraphale understands the necessity, and it has been difficult to manoeuvre in it.

The demon's own sleek black and red toga is streaked in ash, the hem also scorched in places. There's a tear in the material by the serpent brooch that holds the sash in place. Aziraphale has never seen Crowley so affected by the world around him, and the thought that this devastation has touched him as well - but why is he here? Crowley should have been safely out of the city by now.

"What - are you -" His body fights the words, chest burning. "What are you doing here? Why didn't...you leave?"

"I was leaving," Crowley hisses. "I was halfway to the gates - why the hell weren't you? The whole city is on fire. There's liquid rock pouring down the mountain, how could you be so -"

He stops when a coughing fit takes Aziraphale, and something like worry suffuses his face for a second. Before the demon leans in and presses a long hand to his chest.

"Oh." Aziraphale feels the demon shove power into him, and not gently, the stinging prickle of occult energy convincing his lungs that they're empty and no longer spasming in pain. Convincing the rest of him that he's not half as exhausted, burned, or bruised as he'd appeared to be. Then Crowley's wings snap away and he's urging Aziraphale to move.

"Half the east city collapsed under the first tremors," Crowley tells him. "The amphitheatre was buried in ash in minutes."

"No." Aziraphale had visited the amphitheatre, crowds of thousands came every week to watch the games, the sports, the entertainment. "How is this - I had no warning." He can't quite hold the anger, or the grief from his voice. There'd been not even a hint that something so devastating was going to happen. An entire city facing a disaster of this magnitude and Aziraphale had known nothing about it. He was supposed to be the earth operative. This wasn't like - the people didn't _deserve_ this.

"You weren't supposed to be here, remember. They probably assumed the place would be wiped off the map, nothing to save, no people to lead anywhere. Just ash and fire and dead bodies in the streets."

"Crowley," Aziraphale rasps desperately. "We have to help them."

Crowley makes a furious noise and grasps him by both shoulders. "You don't understand, there is no helping them. There's only getting out of the city alive now. You've ssseen it yourself. It's barely evening and the sssky is black, we're getting rocks hurled at us, rocks full of liquid rock from the mountain. It's spewing its insides all over Pompeii. This is as close to hell on earth as I've ever seen. There's no help to be given, angel. The people in the amphitheatre were cooked alive - the air was too hot to survive. Who knows how long we have before the rest of the mountain goes up, or comes down, or liquefies and kills everything in its path."

Crowley's hot, sweaty hand slides down and wraps tight around Aziraphale's wrist. Fingers squeezing -

_"Hold tight to her, or you'll get lost in the smoke."_

No one had ever held him before.

No one had ever come to save him.

He's pulled gently but insistently after the demon.

"Three streets left, straight ahead for five, two streets right, around the forum, out through the Marina gate," Crowley hisses to himself. "It's a good thing I was paying attention, I can't see a thing," he complains. "It's almost impossible to navigate without a miracle. Neither body is any fucking help. Snakes see by heat, but the air looks like soup right now."

Aziraphale tries to keep up, and Crowley's reassuring squeezes, gentle tugs and soft calls of his name help. But it's so hard to breathe again, a wet sharpness stabbing deep every time he inhales, and then every time he exhales too. The ash is hot around his feet and ankles. The torn edges of his tunic and toga pulling through the muck.

He can still hear people left alive, muffled behind stone and wood, too far away to reach. Calling out for help. But there's no one left to help them.

"Crowley -"

"Nearly there, nearly there," Crowley promises. Only to stop as they round a side street, because they've reached a dead end where two walls have collapsed together, a jagged mass of bricks and broken timber covered in a deep pile of hot grey dust and burning wood. The whole street is impassable.

Aziraphale coughs again, his chest feels so heavy inside, as if he's breathing stones rather than smoke.

Crowley turns to him. "Aziraphale, you're going to have to stop breathing, or at least change your corporation enough to -" 

The words falter at Aziraphale's head shake, at his breathless, "I can't."

"You should have power enough for that," Crowley says, bewildered. "What did you do?" He lays hands on him and Aziraphale feels the slithering, probing searches of his current corporation. He's too exhausted to stop it, and isn't sure he wants to. Crowley's solid twisting threads of power feel too much like comfort. The faintly stinging chill of them all at once familiar and deeply unknown. "What did you do? Your body's dying. You're not even healing minor internal damage, How much of your reserves did you use?"

"I was trying to help," Aziraphale says, with difficulty. "There were so many people."

"You were trying to get yourself killed," Crowley hisses. "You're all but defenceless, angel. What did you expect to do like this?"

Crowley's right. He's barely better than a human at this point. He's been pushing his corporation too hard and it can't hold or channel any more power. Crowley's angrier than Aziraphale has ever seen him, but rather than being afraid it makes him want to grip the demon's dusty, ash-stained toga, to lean into him and apologise. To let Crowley's body hold his weight for just a moment - and Aziraphale knows he would. He knows without having to be asked, the demon's expression through his broken glasses has never been so naked.

"Which is why you should leave me," Aziraphale manages in a strained, painful voice. The thought is almost unbearable but he will not be the cause of Crowley discorporating here too, leaving him back in hell without a body. "Go on to the coast - get yourself away from here."

"Don't you dare sssay that -"

"You can make it on your own," Aziraphale insists, against that furious expression. "You may not be able to miracle yourself out through this, but you can protect yourself from the worst of it until you're free. It's too dangerous for the both of us. We both know it isn't finished yet. We both know what's going to happen."

"I didn't come all this way back to find you just for you to tell me to leave you here -" Crowley is denied the chance to finish, because Vesuvius gives a great cracking boom that has them both looking up over the top of the broken grey villas and temple roofs. Towards the bright, hot glow of the mountain. 

In the distance there's a rolling rush of air and dust, a blisteringly hot wave surging closer. Aziraphale has enough time to see it tear into the city before Crowley's wings snap open and then upwards, spread in an arc, feathers stretching to their fullest extent before dragging Aziraphale underneath them.

He feels the static charge of occult power. Then he feels the moment the fury of the mountain slams into them both. Their sandals shift a few inches on the stones of the road, and Aziraphale's feet burn as the leather straps catch fire and melt across his toes in shocking bursts of pain.

"Crowley!" he shouts desperately, hands reaching up to bunch tight in the demon's toga. The roaring is so loud he doesn't know if Crowley hears him, but he can feel his narrow chest heaving beneath the material. "Crowley," he says again. He can smell burning feathers, drifts of hot orange ash spitting around their blackened feet, the world outside is falling in, the loud crashes of weight into stone, of the road cracking and shifting under a shake from below. He presses closer, holds the demon as tightly as he can.

The rushing finally subsides, and he can now hear the low crackle of fire, the tumble and scrape of debris settling around them, the slide of misplaced ash. The city around them now burned, abandoned and utterly empty.

Aziraphale's corporation has stopped feeling pain. He's not sure whether that's something he did, perhaps a last desperate attempt at self-protection, or the lingering effects of whatever Crowley managed to throw up around them. But the flicker of orange above him has him shaking Crowley gently. Fingers twisting in quiet panic.

"Crowley, your wing is on fire," he says, the sheer madness of it too much for a moment. It feels like he's sobbing. He can't make himself let go of the dark toga he's holding so desperately. As if the demon is the only thing left in the world.

"I know," Crowley says roughly, the words hushed and soft in the skin of his neck. "It's alright. Demon remember, had a long fall into molten sulphur once, the fire can't hurt me any more." It's such a terrible, awful thing to say. Aziraphale doesn't know how to comfort him, doesn't know if he even needs comfort. He doesn't know how to thank him for being his rescuer from this hellish nightmare. But the demon's face lifts, presses fiercely to Aziraphale's ash-darkened hair, a low whine in his throat, his sharp fingers digging into Aziraphale's arms. Whatever he'd done to protect them hadn't been enough to completely avoid damage himself.

The world around them finally goes still, the immense pressure easing, the clouds of debris settled as much as they're able to in the ruined streets around them. When Crowley's burning wing shifts aside the world is no longer thick and grey. Orange glows fiercely from the ruined entryways of buildings, the rock-strewn marketplace, the destroyed homes. Where shapes revealed within are charred beyond recognition, ash slowly settling on their exposed forms.

Aziraphale makes himself stop looking. He can't do anything for any of them now.

He's so very tired.

Crowley lifts his sooty hands, lays them both on the softness of Aziraphale's chest and he pours power into him. Both of Aziraphale's hands hurriedly move to grasp his wrist.

"Crowley, you can't keep doing that." He doesn't have the strength to stop him, until he does - but by then he's lifted his head to see Crowley's ash-smudged face. To see the quiet worry in his eyes, the determination. Aziraphale doesn't push his hands away, but he squeezes tightly while his corporation is repaired. More than repaired, Crowley encourages his body to ignore the heat, the scrape of dust and rock in his throat, the burn of hot stones beneath his repaired sandals. "Not too much," he says quietly instead. "Please, you need to think of yourself."

"We'll never make it if I have to worry about you dying." It's clearly something that has been worrying him.

"We'll never make it if both of us are too drained to protect ourselves," Aziraphale says. He doesn't know how much power Crowley used to get to him. "Please." 

Crowley watches him for a moment, and then his hands slide away, move to the shoulder of his own toga instead. There's a rough tearing sound as he shreds the length of black cloth that drapes down from the clasp, lifts it to press against Aziraphale's mouth, covering it gently.

"If you must breathe, at least be sensible. This isn't air right now. It's hot ash and bits of rock and glass. It's cutting your lungs to pieces."

Aziraphale nods, he knows, of course he does, but he hadn't been able to do anything about it. Thinking about it had just been an unpleasant and distracting reminder.

"I could help, my wings -"

Crowley shakes his head. "Would be useless to you without any ethereal power, you'd have no way to protect them," he argues. "Their physical manifestations weren't made for this much heat."

"Neither were yours," Aziraphale says softly. "I'm sorry, it must have been -" He'd heard that demons lost much of the sensation beneath when their wings burned in the Fall, that they can no longer connect to the world, or each other, the way that angels could. He'd always wondered if it was true - and having it all but confirmed leaves him feeling devastated all over again

Crowley doesn't speak for a long moment, and Aziraphale worries that he's said something terrible, something wounding that he can't take back. But Crowley curls an arm around his back and leads him back the way they'd come, his scorched wing lifted over him. Aziraphale can feel the way it tips and moves to deflect the worst of the debris and embers falling from above. But it's still tough going through the streets. The ash is knee high in places, hot enough to melt together, light enough to be displaced and breathed in, and it's only getting heavier.

Crowley steers them away from the worst of it.

What would have taken a few minutes seems to take ten times that. The broken city is lit only by fires and the weak smudged-out light of the far distant sky.

They pass bodies on their way out. Dirty grey shapes that had fallen in the streets. People who'd suffocated when the air became too hot to breathe, who'd been caught in the ashfall and buried before they could make their way free. People pinned beneath structures which had collapsed under the tremors, the eruption, the falling debris. People that had simply burned when the wave of blisteringly hot air swept the city. Some of the shapes are tragically, unbearably small.

"Crowley."

"I know, angel, we can't help them now."

The demon doesn't understand. "No, I sent people this way. I sent them this way and told them they'd be safe."

"None of this is your fault, Aziraphale." Crowley turns enough to see him, his yellow eyes wide and full but unexpectedly soft over his broken glasses. "You did the best you could, you did more than anyone else could have done. This one isn't on you. This one isn't -" He grits his teeth and slips a hand down, pushing his fingers through Aziraphale's and gripping tightly.

Yesterday Aziraphale would have been horrified by the gesture. It would have seemed unthinkable to accept such close physical contact from a demon. But it settles something inside him, to be held so tightly, to not be alone in this madness. The feeling of Crowley's familiar demonic essence, discordant and sharp, is a strange comfort.

"We have to keep going, we can talk about this later. The mountain is going to bury the city. It's already too hot for anything to survive."

Aziraphale hadn't thought to worry about how far this madness might extend, or how much further it would go before it stopped. The Flood had lasted for forty days. The thought of something like this continuing for that long is too horrific to contemplate.

"Do you think...Herculaneum?" He'd never visited but it was supposed to be a beautiful coastal city. They'd still been rebuilding some of the damage from the earthquakes that had struck a generation ago. "They were in its path as well."

Crowley shakes his head, as if he doesn't know, or doesn't want to say. Aziraphale finds that he's squeezing the demon's fingers, and he's suddenly afraid of how necessary the contact has become to him.

The earth is trembling again, and the noise from behind them is like nothing Aziraphale has ever heard before, the cracking of buildings shaken to their breaking points, the hiss of fire destroying what it can and smouldering in what it can't. They move towards the coast, but the air gets no cooler, the sky no lighter. It's like the whole world has disappeared. Aziraphale can see nothing but ash.

"How much farther to the gates." He finds that his navigational skills are useless without landmarks, or without angelic senses to orient himself.

"We left the city a few minutes ago," Crowley says softly, almost apologetically.

No.

That's impossible.

Aziraphale can't quite take it in for a moment. If they were outside the city then this should all be fields. It should be a stretch of vibrant countryside. He should be able to see the beachfront and the water from here. But instead there's just the endless grey, and the burning of his legs as they slide through it. The rasp of tired lungs, and Crowley's hand, Crowley's feet, Crowley's voice urging him gently on.

Aziraphale is almost surprised when they come to a stop. Crowley's smoking wings slowly fold down, disappear completely, and it takes him a moment to realise that there are voices in the distance, shouting, crying, coughing. Proof that they're not the only ones who survived, that other people are still alive.

He lifts his head, sees the faint outline of torches and the drift of bodies through the smoke.

He squeezes Crowley's hand and moves towards them.


	3. Until The Break Of Day

They make their way down through the ash-buried fields, towards the voices and the faint glow of torches, and eventually bodies start to take shape through the smoke, words becoming clearer. Crowley's surprised to realise that there are far more people than he'd originally thought. A hundred or more grey figures in small groups and pairs. They stretch all the way along the dock and up the beachfront - which is no longer sand but a slush of wet ash, rocks and debris. It doesn't stop there but continues out into the thrashing water, leaving it thick with dirty black and grey foam and chunks of pumice. The crashing waves are moving great piles of it every time they hit the shore. Crowley doesn't know how far out the ash is falling, but there seems to be no end to it. The weather patterns could take it hundreds of miles or more yet.

Aziraphale is still holding his hand, he'd made no move to let go when they came in sight of people. Crowley is half afraid to give any sign that he's noticed, lest it encourage him to slip his hand free. It's something of a comfort, a grasp on the angel to reassure him that Crowley didn't leave him in the city. As undemonic of a choice as that may have been, he'd never have done any different.

There seem to be at least three arguments going on as they approach. The loudest occurring forty or so feet in front of them. One of the men turns, gesturing frantically at them.

"See, there's still hope after all, there are still people coming out of the city." The words feel like an accusation, as if he hopes it will win him an argument, or quiet someone's insistence that Pompeii is doomed.

"There won't be any more," Crowley grates out, heading for the tightest gathering of men, most of them in just their tunics, a few with the remains of what were once white togas. They don't look happy at his words, but false hope is only going to get more people killed. Even if anyone is still alive in the city, none of these people would survive going back to save them. "The city's lost, the air's too hot to breathe now. We barely survived getting out. What are you all still doing here?"

"Waiting to die if they have their way," a man in a torn red toga says miserably. He's hunched over the end of the broken dock, the wet wood heavy under the weight of ash and slurry. "The boats abandoned us here."

"They'll come back," a woman insists. Only to be loudly jeered by at least a dozen of the milling crowd.

A heavyset man wearing expensive jewellery is shaking his head. "No one will come back into this."

That seems to be the catalyst for far too many people to start speaking at once.

_"They can't come back - have you not seen the water - there's no way to get through - how could they leave us here - I told him he would be safe - she refused to leave, said she'd wait for her father - has anyone seen my husband, please he was with me - they said Pliny was sending his fleet - no one is coming, we should just start walking - the ash is too thick - the mountain is going to kill us all - we should have gone with the rest, we should have left with them - we were stupid to think - there are no gods, there is no Rome, it's nothing but this now, this fire and darkness -"_

Aziraphale slips away from Crowley, the warm press of his hand gone for the damp, salty air of the beach. The angel moves among the coughing, crying crowd of people trying to do good, trying to help where he can. Trying to offer comfort, and perhaps some hope. Crowley almost stops him, almost tugs him back with a protest that he has no power, that these people are a threat to him now. But Aziraphale stops beside a large man sitting on an upturned wine cask, a small soot-stained boy on his left knee. The boy is petting a baby goat that's tucked protectively between the man's sandals and Aziraphale seems intent on the both of them. He smiles for the first time since Crowley found him unconscious on the stone, thought him dead and felt it in a way he never wanted to feel again.

The angel's expression looks relieved as he exchanges words with them. A friend maybe - Crowley tries not to let the thought sting.

"Where are all the boatsss?" he demands, loud enough to snap the rush of voices into silence.

"All gone," the heavyset man says in anger. "All taken down the coast, or out into that mess out there, people were paying ten times the price for them. People who couldn't pay were left on the shore."

Crowley scowls at the bitterly spat words. Of course they were, nothing like a disaster to bring out both the best and the worst in people.

"This is no sea for trying your luck," a second man adds, gesturing to the waves that can be seen crashing together before the smoke disappears the sea from view. Crowley can see the filth spattered on the survivors, on their expensive sandals and togas and their sun-darkened, soot-stained feet and calves. "It's rough enough to tax a skilled oarsman, and you can't see a cubit in front of your face. I saw one of them capsize earlier, I don't know if anyone managed to swim to safety."

"They had the right of it," an ash-smeared man says fiercely, from his position at the head of the splintered dock. "The city is doomed, and so are we if we stay here. Milling like cattle hoping for rescue is just going to get us all killed."

"What are you planning to do, Octavius, swim back to Rome?" Judging by the looks Octavius is receiving he'd not endeared himself to the locals before Crowley and Aziraphale joined them.

Crowley leaves the humans to their petty bickering, heads down the beach to find the angel. He's on his knees beside a seated woman, bandaging a nasty burn on her leg with a strip of her stola. She has her teeth gritted, making wet, beaten noises through them. It will need more than a bandage soon if it's not going to fester. The angel is doing the best with what he has, of course he is. Though Crowley has never seen him so dishevelled, in his ruined dirty grey clothing, skin smeared dark, eyes damp and raw from the smoke.

He looks human and defenceless and Crowley hates it. This far from the mountain Crowley thinks he could take him away from here, he has power enough for that. He could take them both down the coast, somewhere safe, somewhere they wouldn't be in danger of choking, or burning, somewhere out of the mountain's reach.

The angel looks up, his weary face searching for Crowley's. It softens with something like relief when he finds it, though Crowley doesn't know how his scowl and scorched hair could comfort anyone right now. Aziraphale offers him a tired but hopeful smile.

Bless it all.

"So if we had a boat?" Crowley demands. He's pretty sure he could miracle a boat - one to carry a hundred people might be pushing it, but it's not like he hasn't ridden the edge of his own raw occult nerves before. Both by choice and not. Aziraphale has been doing it all day.

There's a shake of head from several of the men.

"It's not just water out there any longer, the ash clumps on the oars and makes them too heavy to row -" A few people nod agreement, some offering curses to the sailors who abandoned them here. "But that's not your only problem, the sea is too rough out there for an inexperienced crew. The waves will throw half of it in the boat with you, you'll sink or capsize before you make it anywhere."

"They were supposed to send ships," another man adds angrily. "But they couldn't get close to shore. Felix says they're docked down the coast until morning now, I don't know where he heard that, whether I should curse him for a liar, or them for bastards."

Crowley looks behind them, where the mountain is now streaked with fire, the sky black above with pumice and rock. He suspects that its full fury is yet to come, and that it will bury Pompeii, and half the coast as well. They are very quickly running out of time.

"There'll be no morning for any of us if we don't leave here now," Aziraphale says beside him, as if he's having the same thought. He doesn't raise his voice, but he doesn't have to. Crowley supposes when an angel tells you you're going to die, you find yourself not questioning it.

"And go where?" One of the seated citizens demands.

"Naples," Crowley offers. At least for a start, depending on how long this is going to go on, and how far it will spread.

A cry of protest runs through the crowd, which is gathering closer together at the promise of action, of purpose.

"You want us to trek along the cliffs, in this darkness, with night coming in and the air a choking fog? That's utter madness."

"The mountain's wrath is going to flow downhill. If you want to be in its path, be my guest." The angel isn't the only one who can make himself heard. But Crowley can do one better, he can promise death if they disagree, he can slither around their frantically beating hearts and show them a world buried in ash.

There is silence.

And then people slowly gather their things to follow him.

Crowley takes the front to start, and those who might have protested think better of it. He'd given the torch he'd been handed a much wider area of illumination than it should have had. Though the usefulness of that is debatable when the air is so thick. Frustratingly, the angel keeps weaving back into the throng of humans, helping children to pass over large rocks, giving an arm to an older citizen having trouble with the loose ground, encouraging two men to help the woman with the burned leg. At one point Crowley looks back and the angel is carrying a small girl who appears to have fallen asleep against his shoulder. Another child is gripping tightly to his hand, walking slowly beside him.

Crowley bites down on a hiss and hands his torch to the large oarsman, who he makes certain knows the way, then he slips back through the crowd to match the angel's pace. He scowls down at the sleepy-eyed child holding Aziraphale's hand, barely able to keep up. He tuts at the predictability of it all and reaches down, grips them under the arms and lifts them. The child's spindly legs immediately wrap around Crowley's waist, head dropping to his shoulder.

"It's a long way for small legs." Aziraphale's smiling ash-smudged face looks tired, but there's an unexpected warmth that Crowley has never seen before. He doesn't know if it's for him or the child.

He makes a sound that means nothing, and hopes that the angel knows better than to comment.

"They were slowing us down," he says simply.

"It's a long way for old legs too," the angel adds, face suddenly soft in a way that Crowley doesn't know how to feel about. "We both know half of these people's lungs should have given out by now." His look seems to say 'I know I'm not responsible for it.'

Crowley scowls at him, how does he not realise how dangerous saying something like that out loud could be for him?

"Demon's don't heal people, don't even suggest such a thing. It's stupid human determination and nothing else."

They go higher, but there are so many of them, in unwieldy togas, and in sandals with no grip - that promise an accident until the angel has them all go barefoot. They're tired and scared and the small cliffs are crumbling under their pace, chunks of rock and dirt falling away as they climb. It's too dark and too dangerous to do this.

But no one falls.

Crowley makes sure of it.

They're spread out across a rise over the ocean when Vesuvius gives one last roaring boom, sends half its mass pouring down the crumbling sides, and the bright glow of it expands outwards like nothing Crowley has ever seen in four thousand years.

They all turn to watch the impossibly vast swell of ash and rocks and burning gas slam into the city. It crashes against its walls like a wave, throwing pieces of the remaining buildings into the air and into neighbouring structures. That boiling mass of fury that nothing human could stand against covers everything in Pompeii with terrifying speed, the amphitheatre, the forum, the temple to Apollo, the macellum, the hundreds of villas, the necropolis - it curls over the Porta Marina, scorches the countryside and keeps going, reaches the water with a deafening hiss, pouring thousands of tons of rock and dust and melted glass into the ocean, the whole world briefly vanishing in a giant explosion of steam -

\- and then it reaches the cliffside, burns its way up the sloping rocks and clumps of dirt they have travelled, and Crowley knows they haven't gone far enough.

_I am not afraid of you._

-

The children are still asleep, and Crowley's free hand has somehow found its way into Aziraphale's again.

He's tired, he's so very tired.

No one speaks. No one mentions what happened on the cliffs.

Crowley is too exhausted to make them all forget.

He mentally rehearses what he'll say to hell if anyone asks why he drained himself almost dry tonight. Because if there was one thing that they didn't like it was the idea that a demon might leave themself defenceless.

_'- Got stuck in that bloody catastrophe too, didn't I? I never meant to stay so long, got drunk trying to get a bit of serious gambling going in the city and didn't notice the sky was falling until it was too late. Thought I'd encourage a spot of looting but things got dicey fast, had to use a fair bit of power to get myself out of there, not once but twice, would you believe it? Couldn't fly in that smoke obviously, so getting out took me fucking forever. I even had to -'_

"Crowley."

He's jerked out of his own thoughts by the sound of his name, and the feel of the angel's hand sliding up his wrist, warm and strong around the fragile bones. He looks up, finds Aziraphale's tired expression next to him, and past it the lights of a city, proof that the world had not ceased to exist. There are cries beside him of people seeing somewhere that might finally be safety, after their long walk through the night.

They slip away while the last survivors of Pompeii greet family, friends and strangers with exhausted clasps of arm and tears of relief. Because this moment of joy and ceremony and grief isn't meant for them, they don't belong there.

Crowley finds a room on the outskirts of the city. He has little enough energy left for convincing anyone to let them in, but one look at the two of them seems to win them some privacy - and some pity - and the pin at Crowley's shoulder buys them an amphora of wine.

Aziraphale sinks onto a stool while Crowley lights the clay lamps, lending the room a soft orange glow that seems to pull out every deep line of ash and dirt in Crowley's skin.

The angel watches quietly as Crowley pours them both wine. He seems all at once small and vulnerable in a way that Crowley can't bear. He's never seen an angel try so hard, fight to the point of raw, painful mortality and risk discorporation for a single human. Not because it was expected of him, not because he was ordered to, but because people mattered to him.

He leans in and gently folds Aziraphale's ash-stained hands around a cup.

"Angel, we're safe now."

If anything the reassurance deepens the lines in Aziraphale's face, the softness of his mouth looking suddenly wounded.

"Are we?" he asks. "Are we really? How do we really, truly know what safety even means? We've never feared for our lives like they have, we've never looked upon a wave and seen our oncoming death, we've never imagined a final terrible end to it all. We've never had to watch everything we love burn. We've never had to consider what we would save. Who we would -" 

The angel stares into his wine like he's never seen it before, fingers white around the cup, and Crowley can see the tremble of the liquid that tells him how unsteady Aziraphale's hands are.

"We both know that discorporation would have inconvenienced us at best," he continues. "A few weeks filling in forms, requisitioning a new body to replace the old. Perhaps a reprimand for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This body isn't important, not really, it doesn't mean anything. It would simply have been covered by ash and buried with all the rest, forgotten."

Crowley doesn't think the angel even realises he's crying.

"I sent people that way, Crowley. I sent them towards the gate, towards what I believed to be safety. I told them to leave, to save themselves and their families. There was no time to save more, though I tried. I did try. But do you know how many of those people I saw when we reached the dock? How many of those people whose faces I saw again?"

Crowley watches the angel crack through the middle, watches him lose something important, and doesn't know how to help him, doesn't know how to comfort him, he's never had to. Crowley wasn't made for this.

"Angel, don't do this to yourself," he says numbly. "You couldn't have known." Crowley doesn't have the right words for this. Nothing he hasn't already said.

"I saw seven." Aziraphale's voice breaks, and Crowley knows he doesn't think it was enough. That he blames himself for the madness he had to send people through. "I don't know what happened to the rest. I was too empty to look for them by then. I couldn't _know_. I may never know if they took a wrong turn, or got lost in the smoke, if they were injured by falling debris, became trapped with no one to help them. I can't know where they fell and never got up again. There were so many. I'm supposed to watch over them. I'm supposed to -" The words fall away and there's nothing but a long shaking sob. Tears sliding through the soot on his cheeks. He looks utterly lost, as if the world had led him to this place and then abandoned him.

Crowley can't help but be furious at the whole plan for leaving them both here tonight, and the pain of it lodges in his chest and thrashes there. It wants him to be anything but gentle. But he defies it, he takes the angel's wine from him and draws him up, hands wrapped around his upper arms as if some of his warmth might transfer. Aziraphale has been reckless for him, he's been brave and he's been burned for it. Crowley can be something he shouldn't as well.

"You did, angel," he says simply. "That was all you did today. With everything you had. You couldn't have given any more." He nearly died for them, if Crowley hadn't been there he would have done. If Crowley had found him too late he wouldn't have stayed to save anyone else. Aziraphale saved those people, not him. "You couldn't have done anything better. Aziraphale, it's not your job to save them all. It never was."

The angel is soft and unresisting when Crowley slowly leans into him, when he folds his arms around him and settles his chin in Aziraphale's ash-grey hair. For a moment it's awkward, Crowley has never held anyone before, and this is far past anything that the angel has ever allowed. But then all of a sudden Aziraphale is heavy and alive, body sinking against his, hands stretching up Crowley's back, fingers gripping in the dirty fabric of his toga, face pressed against the thin wool over his chest. He holds against whatever he's feeling for the space of one breath, and then he cries in soft, heaving shakes.

Crowley feels every one of them, feels the warm flare of his breath and the dampness where his cheek and half-open mouth are pressed over the join of his ribs. He breathes the smoke in Aziraphale's hair, and shushes him. He tells him that it's over, that there won't be any more punishment. He tells him that he's here, if that matters.

He's never done this before. He's seen humans do it so many times, but he's never held a single other being against him and tried to soothe its pain.

Eventually the angel quiets, breathing softly in Crowley's hold, and Crowley knows he's the one who's going to have to break it. He fights it for a moment, the selfish part of him wondering why it always has to be him, why he always has to let go.

But then he does.

Crowley guides the angel to sit again, considering his tear-stained face for a moment, the sheer wrongness of it. But even like this there's still something about him that leaves Crowley unable to look away. The way Aziraphale can be so beautiful and so devastated at the same time. A precious thing left behind, his genuine desire to be a force for good unseen and unappreciated. Heaven is blind to everything Aziraphale is, and if Crowley hated them for nothing else he'd hate them for that.

"You did exactly what you were told to do," Crowley says, measuring out the words carefully. Because there's a time for arguments and a time to make the angel feel whole again. "As best as you could. You couldn't have done any more."

There's a basin of water and Crowley sets it down on the floor, sparing a breath of power to make a white cloth, which he soaks in the water and then wrings out. The angel doesn't protest when he carefully lifts it to his face and dabs gently at the sooty smears on his cheek.

He's doing nothing but revealing the angel beneath. No accusations can be laid on his demonic nature with something so simple as cleaning an adversary after a battle has left him spent.

"You were told to watch the humans, which you did." Crowley keeps his words soft as he slowly pulls grey from the space in front of the angel's ear. "You've always done that. No matter where you are, you've always watched, always appreciated the things they've done, the things they've built, haven't you?"

Crowley waits for Aziraphale to silently nod.

"Course you have." He lifts the other hand, carefully holds the angel's chin while he wipes under his eye, the round of his cheek and the long curve of his jaw. He finds soft pink skin underneath and something in that leaves his chest aching. "S'what you do. You know them as well as I do by now. Though you have a tendency to always think the best of them. While I tend to see them at their worst. I think the truth of them is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere between heaven and hell, striving for a bit of both, that's what they do."

The wet cloth gently pulls over Aziraphale's eyebrow, dragging smears of ash and smoke away.

"You were watching, and you knew that something was going to happen, but neither of us could have known how bad it could be." That's as close to a lie as he'll dare. They could have known, they could have understood. It might not have made that much of a difference, there was only so much they could do - only so much they were allowed.

Aziraphale's inhale is shaky and tired. "If we'd had warning, Crowley."

"We weren't supposed to be there at all," Crowley reminds him. "But the humans are smart, Aziraphale, most of them got out before the worst of it happened. Most of them are now here, or in Cumae, or Capua, or Salerno. We saw them leaving when the ash started to fall."

They'd both been distracted by lunch, maybe if Crowley hadn't stayed so long, if he hadn't played so many games with the angel, insisting on one more after the first, and then best out of three. If Crowley had left the angel alone he might have been out of the city before Vesuvius erupted - and a hundred and seven people would likely be dead.

"You don't think it was a judgment?" Aziraphale asks, something quiet and desperate in his expression. A plea for the answer to be no.

"No," Crowley says honestly. He wrings out the cloth and carefully gets to work on the other side of Aziraphale's face, finding a soft, tired angel beneath the horror of the last day. "No, angel, people don't normally survive one of those, do they?" He doesn't let bitterness creep into the words, though he can feel it at the back of his throat. The familiar ache of it. "Not ordinary people, not ones that She hasn't chosen."

Aziraphale nods, accepting the truth of it with more certainty than Crowley feels.

"They would have told you," Crowley reassures him. "Course they would."

He works gently at the angel's hairline, the dark grey of his hair stained beyond his power to help with a cloth and a few gentle words. Crowley is used to seeing his own hands black with ash, with rot and filth and blood. But Aziraphale deserves better, Aziraphale deserves to hope for the best.

"They would have told me too. Hell likes to gloat about stuff like that. Humans being a disappointment, they can't get enough of it. The mountain was dangerous all along. The smoke was a warning, they just didn't know it. They will next time. They learn, they learn so fast, you know they do."

The whole world is more complicated than they could imagine, a giant rock puzzle with more moving parts and sloshing insides than Crowley had ever cared to delve into. Though he suspects that will change for both of them now. Humanity might stay away from the angry ones too - though he knows them too well to be certain of it.

Aziraphale's face is as clean as he can make it, and it only strikes him now how unresisting the angel had been to his touch, to his careful holds and slow pulls of cloth. As if he hasn't the will to fight him. Or as if he's decided that Crowley can be trusted to slip in close and see to his needs while his mind is still bruised and vulnerable. Crowley's not sure which one of those scares him the most.

"Do you want me to see if they have food?" he asks. Because he dislikes this quiet defeat. He's seen too much of it already. "Some of that olive bread you like, or some cold pork with garum?"

Aziraphale takes a breath and then sighs it out. "No, I think - I think I'm too tired to eat."

Crowley knows a thing or two about tired. "Why don't you lay on the bed for a while then? Until your body can perform miracles again. Or until you can channel upstairs."

Aziraphale seems to consider this for a moment.

"I don't really sleep," he confesses. "But lying down for a while to compose myself, to rest for a while, that sounds like a good idea."

"There you go." Crowley lifts a hand and settles it under the angel's elbow as he rises. They've touched more tonight than they have in the four thousand years they've known each other, and Crowley knows how dangerous that is. But he also knows that they might never touch again after tomorrow, and the thought pains him.

Aziraphale stretches himself out on the blankets.

"I shall get the covers terribly dirty," he says, something of an apology in his voice, and Crowley can't help a laugh - or the croak of something that might be. At how absurd that feels, while being so painfully Aziraphale, and the thought that he knows the angel so well is a strange comfort.

"We can fix them in the morning," he reassures him. They couldn't fix anything else about tonight, not without being noticed, but the blankets Crowley could fix.

"You should lie down too," Aziraphale offers. "You look tired as well and I know you sleep sometimes. You've mentioned it. I doubt I'm going to move much, and the bed is large."

Crowley can't dispute that, it's a very large bed and he's more exhausted than he has been for centuries. His whole body feels too heavy on his bones. He thinks he should protest though. Out of everything he's done to keep the angel safe, this might be the most reckless thing of all.

"Aziraphale, I don't think -"

"I don't want to be here alone," Aziraphale admits, before Crowley can make excuses. "There's too much to think about. Please lie down and distract me for a while."

Crowley can't find it in him to deny that soft request. He sinks into the space next to the angel, letting his sandals fall and stretching out beside him. Perhaps a little too close, but he's a demon, isn't he? What else is he supposed to do but Tempt, even if it's only himself.

The quiet feels so heavy that Crowley has to break it.

"M'sorry," he says awkwardly, if only here where hell can't hear him. "About the people you tried to save."

Aziraphale looks for a moment as if he might cry again and Crowley feels stupid for upsetting him. But then the angel's expression slips into a smile, and he nods.

"Crowley, it means a lot to me that you thought of me, that you came back for me."

"Hush," Crowley says. Something inside him crawling unpleasantly at the quiet way the angel says it. The way he makes Crowley feel like something he isn't, something he hasn't been for a long, long time. "Do you know how much trouble I'd be in if you tell anyone else?"

"You could have left the city at any time. You had enough power for that. You could have abandoned me, and all the people we saved."

"Don't," Crowley says firmly. Because it's dangerous. It's so dangerous to say things like that. "They just followed us out is all, found the gap I made and slipped through it. I was protecting myself."

Aziraphale blinks at him in the darkness, as if he's going to call him on the lie.

"Say it, angel," Crowley insists.

But Aziraphale understands. He understands in a way that no one else ever has done. No one else has ever tried.

"You were protecting yourself," he says slowly. "Very properly demonic of you. You were angry that we followed you, that we took advantage of the opening you'd made and slipped through. If anyone asks."

The words are exactly what Crowley needs to hear. But Aziraphale's expression is still soft and open, eyes drifting over Crowley's face with something he's too afraid to name, before rising again to meet his own. He understands, and something about that feels like a fist inside Crowley's chest, a weight he's not sure he could pull out - even if he wanted to.

"I was protecting the things that matter to me." Crowley realises immediately that he'd said something he shouldn't, given away too much - because that's not the same thing at all. He pretends the words aren't important, drags up more to cover them. "We'll go our separate ways tomorrow."

"Crowley."

"We won't see each other for a bit," he hurries to add.

"Crowley."

"If anyone finds out, if they ask what you were doing, say that you were helping survivors, and I was encouraging them to loot -"

Aziraphale's fingers reach across the space between them, catch and then twist in the dusty folds of Crowley's toga, the faintest slide of movement in the bed, the gentlest stretch forward - and Aziraphale is kissing him. All Crowley's words are gone, instantly. There's nothing but the slow sinking pressure of the angel's mouth against his own. Crowley closes his eyes, he doesn't move, he doesn't breathe, heart lurching in his chest. The moment drags on and on. The pressure increases until he's helpless not to push back into the kiss, make it real, the faintest sound breaking from him. Eventually, after what could have been a brief moment or an eternity, Aziraphale very slowly eases away. He takes the softness of his mouth with him. He lays on the other side of the bed, watching Crowley without speaking.

They're not supposed to do this - they're not allowed - it's a sin, or a blasphemy, Crowley suddenly can't remember the difference.

"Aziraphale." The name comes out hoarse, a collection of sounds he somehow makes. He can still feel the angel's mouth, can still taste the sweetness of him, can smell ash over the far more familiar scent of the only angel he's ever really known. And now the only one he's ever kissed.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says simply. "I couldn't have - not without you. Thank you for coming back for me. Thank you for helping me save those people."

"No, don't thank me," Crowley says thickly. "That's not allowed." Though that doesn't mean that Crowley won't come for him. That he won't always come for Aziraphale if he can. The thought of leaving the angel, of making him go through anything like this alone. Crowley would rather discorporate.

Aziraphale sighs quietly, eyes closing.

"I know, I'm sorry. I don't want you to get into trouble. I would never want that. I just wanted to tell you..."

"Tell me what, angel?"

Aziraphale's eyes remain closed, his lips slightly parted. Crowley can feel the slow warmth of every breath. The hand curled in his toga is relaxed and still. He realises after a moment that the angel is asleep.

It's such a surprising moment of vulnerability. He'll have most of his ability to channel ethereal power again by morning, but now - now he's defenceless and lovely and the only thing a miserable demon has cared about for millennia, and Crowley doesn't know what to do with that.

He lifts a hand, watches his long sooty fingers with their dark nails drift in towards the relaxed softness of the angel's face. He imagines what it would feel like to trail them over the curve of his cheek, the line of his nose, or the bone of his jaw. If he'd still feel like Aziraphale underneath, that sleeping, tightly wound shimmer of angel. If he'd feel Crowley's essence in turn. Would he shy away from it, instinctively, or would he shift sleepily towards it, recognising something familiar, something he trusted?

Crowley wonders if a demon who would touch a sleeping angel deserves any trust at all.

He lets his hand fall to the blankets. He watches the angel breathe for a while. Feeling the soft press of his knuckles every time he takes a breath of his own. Until his exhausted body tugs him into sleep -

\- Crowley wakes to the afternoon sun creeping in through the gaps in the blinds over the window.

The bed next to him is empty.

He doesn't take it personally, he's surprised the angel stayed so long. It's dangerous to be seen together here, away from the fury of the mountain. One night of comfort can't change what they are. One moment of - of connection that the angel probably regrets doesn't mean that Crowley is forgiven. There can never be anything - 

He stops, having pushed himself to a sit among the soot-stained, crumpled remains of the bed they'd shared. The cloth he'd used to carefully wash the angel's face has been left on the low table beside the bed, cleaned and then folded into the perfect white shape of a bird.

Crowley leans over, reaches out and lifts it carefully. The soft folds bend under his fingers, but hold their shape, the rounded belly and wings make it look like a dove. It crackles with Aziraphale's ethereal signature, leaving the faintest static on Crowley's ash-stained fingers. Though the cloth stays pristine.

The angel has left him far more than folded cloth.

Crowley stares down at it for a long moment. Eventually he rises from the bed, his clothes returning to their original state, ash leaving his skin and his hair. He tucks the dove into the inside of his toga, the soft fabric warm against his skin.

He leaves the city, unnoticed and unremarked, as a proper demon should.


End file.
